Colombo de Cabri

Medium·40 min active + 1 hour 20 min resting

The French-Antillean goat curry — goat braised in colombo, a Tamil-Indian-derived spice blend of turmeric, coriander, and cumin, with onion, garlic, and a sour note of lime or tamarind. The great festive dish.

Colombo most likely takes its name from the Tamil word kuzhambu (kulambu), a tamarind-soured Tamil curry; folk etymologies linking it to the Sri Lankan capital Colombo or to Christopher Columbus are secondary. It was brought to the French Antilles by 19th-century Tamil indentured laborers (recruited from the Coromandel Coast and Pondichery after the 1848 abolition of slavery, arriving from the 1860s); colombo de cabri (goat) is its festive peak.

Spoon up colombo de cabri and the goat is fork-tender in a thick, golden, fragrant curry sauce. Bite: the goat is deeply savory and a little gamey, the colombo spice warm and earthy (turmeric, cumin, coriander) with a sour lime lift, the potato soaking up the sauce, a gentle scotch-bonnet heat. The festive curry of the French Antilles, a Tamil-Creole treasure over rice.

Colombo powder, freshly toasted and ground in the Tamil tradition, is the soul; frying it in oil blooms its flavor before the liquid goes in. Long braising tenderizes the goat and melds the spices, the lime cutting the richness — a curry naturalized over 150 years in the Antilles.

Variations

With chicken or pork. With chayote and green papaya. Spicier. With mango added. With a tamarind sour note. Drier.

On the Palate

Where Colombo de Cabri sits in the Martinican flavor cloud

Cook to learn

Bloom the colombo powder in hot oil for a minute before any liquid — frying the freshly ground spice wakes its flavor, and it's the soul of the curry; then braise the goat slow until tender.

Techniques

Braising Marinating

Ingredients

Serves 5

1 kgGoat

3 tbsp colomboTurmeric

How it's made

8 steps · 40 min active + 1 hour 20 min waiting

1
32 min
Cut 1 kg goat into chunks; marinate in lime, garlic, and thyme 30 min.
2
8 min
Brown the goat in oil in a heavy pot.
3
5 min
Add 1 chopped onion, garlic, and spring onion; soften.
4
2 min
Stir in 3 tbsp colombo powder (turmeric, coriander, cumin, fenugreek, mustard) and cook 1 min.
Watch out
Stir the colombo powder in the oil until it darkens a shade and smells nutty-fragrant — about a minute — before the water goes in.
5
3 min
Add water to half-cover, thyme, and a whole scotch bonnet.
6
76 min
Cover and braise 75 min until the goat is tender.
Watch out
The goat is ready when a fork twists in without resistance and the sauce has thickened around it.
7
25 min
Add 2 cubed potatoes (and chayote) in the last 25 min.
8
3 min
Finish with lime juice and serve with rice.